Ricky

August, 1969

Cindy was sitting on the floor, with her Beatles vinyl record in front of her when Ricky and his friend Keith came in with a machine in his hands.

"What is that?" she asked as Ricky sat in front of her and set the machine on the floor. Keith sat on the couch with his legs crossed.

"It's a two-track tape recorder," Ricky explained. "We can record music with it."

"We?!"

"I was talking about me and Keith. You're still a bit young, sis. Maybe when you're sixteen?"

"No. I want to make music now."

Ricky pulled his sleeve up to check the time. It was still three hours before he would have to meet the boss at the landfill, so it maybe wouldn't hurt to take Keith's dad's car out for a ride or go somewhere cheesy.

"You wanna go to the ice cream parlour?" he suggested, before his sister could get too restless. "Chocolate chip."

Cindy's eyes widened. Ricky knew how much she liked ice cream, and she hardly ever got to have it, so she would take any opportunity available to have one.

"YES!" she shouted, and it wasn't long after that they left.

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Ricky took another like out of his strawberry ice cream as Cindy wolfed down her chocolate ice cream. He preferred to eat his slowly so then the goodness would last longer, but Cindy rather understandably wanted to have hers gone as soon as possible.

Keith sat beside them, eating vanilla ice cream. He was halfway through his when Cindy sat back, licking ice cream from her lips. She was already done, and she looked like a mess. She always did after eating a lot of ice cream. Ricky handed her the napkins to wipe her face so she wouldn't look like a monster. After all three of them were done, they were standing outside the parlour.

Ricky checked his watch. Half an hour before he showed up for work. He needed to get going. The boss would be pissed if he didn't show up.

"Take care of my sister," Ricky said as he handed Keith the keys to his house. "I gotta go to work."

As they both watched Ricky leave, Keith looked down at Cindy. He had an older brother and sister, but he didn't have a younger sister, and he never baby-sat.

"What do you want to do?" Keith asked, out of lack of a better thing to say.

"Well," Cindy put both of her hands behind her back and swung her hips side to side. "Let's go to the playground near my school."